The protector

Keep calm and carry on (Se-ri's POV)

Warning: harsh sexist language and an anxiogenic scene. If you don't feel like reading, leave a comment or DM me and I'll provide you a recap

Seoul, 2027, October

Wonder Group, 11 AM circa

The outsize L-shaped desk would have shined with the light coming from the equally outsize window at his back, if it wouldn't have been full of documents. One would have expected the computer, the tablet, and the smartphone to replace the paper, but this hadn't happened yet. The amount of wons the company still put in the annual expenditure for the ink of the printers and the copier still was obscenely high. To what extent providing all those devices to his employees then, for paying the energy's sake? Once again – it happened at least every three months, and precisely when it was time to present the quarterly data to the investors – Seo-jin dreamed to replace all the windows with solar panels. If it hadn't happened yet, it only was because the complete change - his company building being the classic glass one that each and every entrepreneur who could afford the cost had requested in the 90' – would have relented the work. So, he was stuck: or his father complained about the quarterly data, or he would have complained about the renovation. Well, he reasoned, his father would have found a reason to complain in any case. Seo-jin was often under the high suspect that it was his own existence, that had the man so grumpy.

The desk. He had requested for it to be designed appositely that way. Not wood, as it was common use among the wannabe chaebol, but a plastic and metal blend, or God knew what. Comfort? It was a torture. The equivalent of the vegan leather armchairs – or the real leather ones, if that mattered -: icy in winter, hot and sweaty in summer in spite of the a/c.

In return, however, his personal assistant could sit on the shorter side in case of need. And he had needed him often, especially in the past. Plus, it was luminous, its natural luminosity never failed to raise up his mood.

As someone who had spent years controlling his heart rate, Seo-jin knew everything about mental health and wellbeing in general. Sunlight, fresh air, meditation, eating good, omega3, nature, animals, sport, hobbies, even dance. There was nothing he hadn't tried yet, and none of his tricks he would have spared for the little Yoon now. It seemed she needed it.

It wouldn't have been a bragging, saying that the picnic he had organized with that exact aim, two weeks before, had turned to be outrageously perfect. Nature, fresh air, light, animals, good eating, good company. The weather still was warm enough, and there still were a good amount of daylight hours. Though, it had been as perfect as useless. He had thought that Se-ri would have eventually relaxed a little, far from Seoul. But it hadn't happened. She hadn't even eaten. She was eating sparingly these days. Se-ri was worrying him.

He didn't like her face since when she had come back from Swiss. When, before they got married, she had told him to not ask her to abandon the scholarship, he had perceived such firmness in her tone that, at that moment, Seo-jin had replied to her that he didn't know anything about music and wasn't interested at all. For some reason, it had seemed as if she needed those two weeks alone, and he had reasoned that it was fair enough. Theirs was an arranged marriage, it was only natural if she wanted to feel free a couple of weeks per year.

But now Seo-jin was finding himself reconsidering that decision. It had been too hasty, probably. Because every time Se-ri came back from Europe she looked tired and moody, as if it was too stressful for her. And on that year, she looked more tired than usual, tired and thin like when he had met her the first time. The chaebol decided that, on the next year, he would have convinced her to attend the event together. Enough with that Swiss alone. If it drained her to that extent, it was obvious that she needed some help.